IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bro/econwp/2008-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Arrow's Impossibility Theorem: Preference Diversity in a Single-Profile World

Author

Listed:

Abstract

In this paper we provide two simple new versions of Arrowís impossibility theorem, in a model with only one preference profile. Both versions are transparent, requiring minimal mathematical sophistication. The first version assumes there are only two people in society, whose preferences are being aggregated; the second version assumes two or more people. Both theorems rely on assumptions about diversity of preferences, and we explore alternative notions of diversity at some length. Our first theorem also uses a neutrality assumption, commonly used in the literature; our second theorem uses a neutrality/monotonicity assumption, which is stronger and less commonly used. We provide examples to illustrate our points.

Suggested Citation

  • Allan M Feldman & Roberto Serrano, 2008. "Arrow's Impossibility Theorem: Preference Diversity in a Single-Profile World," Working Papers 2008-8, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bro:econwp:2008-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economics.brown.edu/sites/g/files/dprerj726/files/papers/2008-8_paper.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marc Fleurbaey & Philippe Mongin, 2005. "The news of the death of welfare economics is greatly exaggerated," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 25(2), pages 381-418, December.
    2. Sen, Amartya K, 1977. "Social Choice Theory: A Re-examination," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(1), pages 53-89, January.
    3. Samuelson, Paul A, 1977. "Reaffirming the Existence of "Reasonable" Bergson-Samuelson Social Welfare Functions," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 44(173), pages 81-88, February.
    4. Allan M. Feldman & Roberto Serrano, 2006. "Welfare Economics and Social Choice Theory, 2nd Edition," Springer Books, Springer, edition 2, number 978-0-387-29368-4, September.
    5. Kenneth J. Arrow, 1950. "A Difficulty in the Concept of Social Welfare," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58, pages 328-328.
    6. Reny, Philip J., 2001. "Arrow's theorem and the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem: a unified approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 99-105, January.
    7. Rubinstein, Ariel, 1984. "The Single Profile Analogues to Multi Profile Theorems: Mathematical Logic's Approach," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 25(3), pages 719-730, October.
    8. Blau, Julian H & Deb, Rajat, 1977. "Social Decision Functions and the Veto," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(4), pages 871-879, May.
    9. Campbell, Donald E. & Kelly, Jerry S., 2002. "Impossibility theorems in the arrovian framework," Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, in: K. J. Arrow & A. K. Sen & K. Suzumura (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 1, pages 35-94, Elsevier.
    10. Kevin W. S. Roberts, 1980. "Social Choice Theory: The Single-profile and Multi-profile Approaches," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(2), pages 441-450.
    11. Robert A. Pollak, 1979. "Bergson-Samuelson Social Welfare Functions and the Theory of Social Choice," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 93(1), pages 73-90.
    12. Kemp, Murray C & Ng, Yew-Kwang, 1976. "On the Existence of Social Welfare Functions, Social Orderings and Social Decision Functions," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 43(169), pages 59-66, February.
    13. Robert P. Parks, 1976. "An Impossibility Theorem for Fixed Preferences: A Dictatorial Bergson-Samuelson Welfare Function," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 43(3), pages 447-450.
    14. Abram Burk, 1938. "A Reformulation of Certain Aspects of Welfare Economics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 52(2), pages 310-334.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Allan M Feldman & Roberto Serrano, 2007. "Arrow's Impossibility Theorem: Preference Diversity in a Single-Profile World," Working Papers 2007-12, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    2. Allan M. Feldman & Roberto Serrano, 2006. "Darwinian Arrow's Impossibility Theorem: Two Simple Single-Profile Versions," Working Papers 2006-11, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    3. Allan M. Feldman & Roberto Serrano, 2007. "Arrow's impossibility theorem: Two simple single-profile versions," Working Papers 2007-07, Instituto Madrileño de Estudios Avanzados (IMDEA) Ciencias Sociales.
    4. Marc Fleurbaey & Philippe Mongin, 2005. "The news of the death of welfare economics is greatly exaggerated," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 25(2), pages 381-418, December.
    5. Mohajan, Haradhan, 2011. "Social welfare and social choice in different individuals’ preferences," MPRA Paper 50851, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 19 Jun 2011.
    6. Elizabeth Maggie Penn, 2015. "Arrow’s Theorem and its descendants," Chapters, in: Jac C. Heckelman & Nicholas R. Miller (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Voting, chapter 14, pages 237-262, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Wesley H. Holliday & Eric Pacuit, 2020. "Arrow’s decisive coalitions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 54(2), pages 463-505, March.
    8. John A. Weymark, 2011. "On Kolm’s Use of Epistemic Counterfactuals in Social Choice Theory," Studies in Choice and Welfare, in: Marc Fleurbaey & Maurice Salles & John A. Weymark (ed.), Social Ethics and Normative Economics, pages 279-301, Springer.
    9. BOSSERT, Walter & SUZUMURA, Kotaro, 2009. "Decisive coalitions and coherence properties," Cahiers de recherche 2009-04, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
    10. d'Aspremont, Claude & Gevers, Louis, 2002. "Social welfare functionals and interpersonal comparability," Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, in: K. J. Arrow & A. K. Sen & K. Suzumura (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 10, pages 459-541, Elsevier.
    11. Susumu Cato, 2010. "Brief proofs of Arrovian impossibility theorems," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 35(2), pages 267-284, July.
    12. Robert Shelburne, 2006. "A Utilitarian Welfare Analysis of Trade Liberalization," ECE Discussion Papers Series 2006_4, UNECE.
    13. Kui Ou-Yang, 2018. "Generalized rawlsianism," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 50(2), pages 265-279, February.
    14. Robert A. Pollak, 1979. "Bergson-Samuelson Social Welfare Functions and the Theory of Social Choice," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 93(1), pages 73-90.
    15. Paolo Giovanni Piacquadio, 2017. "A Fairness Justification of Utilitarianism," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 1261-1276, July.
    16. Antoinette Baujard, 2016. "Welfare economics," Chapters, in: Gilbert Faccarello & Heinz D. Kurz (ed.), Handbook on the History of Economic Analysis Volume III, chapter 42, pages 611-624, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Pierre Bernhard & Marc Deschamps, 2018. "Arrow’s (im)possibility theorem," Post-Print hal-01941037, HAL.
    18. Yew‐Kwang Ng, 1981. "Bentham or Nash? On the Acceptable Form of Social Welfare Functions," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 57(3), pages 238-250, September.
    19. Susumu Cato, 2018. "Collective rationality and decisiveness coherence," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 50(2), pages 305-328, February.
    20. Florian Brandl & Felix Brandt, 2020. "Arrovian Aggregation of Convex Preferences," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(2), pages 799-844, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Arrow's Theorem; single-profile;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bro:econwp:2008-8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Brown Economics Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.